Is Wing Chun being used the wrong way in fighting?

[KPM]

OK, Andrew asked about the proposed rule-set for WC competition. Generally speaking this:

Fight on a small, round, raised platform, say three meters/yards in diameter, raised about 30cm/1ft. above the floor. Use light, open-palm UFC style gloves, allow punches, palms and elbows to all safe targets (no throat, eye, groin shots, etc.) Same for kicks, and allow grappling, throws and takedowns. Win on points or KO/TKO. Also, fighting stops within say 5 - 8 seconds of going to the ground. If a submission can be achieved that quickly, it would also end the fight. And you loose if you step, fall, or are thrown off the platform onto the mat --unless both fighters go over the side. That's a reset. Or perhaps better, even after getting tossed off the platform, you could just lose points and reset. We don't want it to end up being like a Sumo competition where driving the guy off the platform becomes the objective.

Except for the limited size of your platform, that is essentially Sanda rules. Why reinvent the wheel?

San Shou Rules

 

[KPM]

Later I did work out the technique of lying on it safely and had some pavers busted on my chest for an article in the old Inside Kung-fu Magazine.

I remember that article! Didn't you also do the old "iron body thing" where you laid stretched out between two folding chairs with your head on one and your feet on the other?

 

[geezer]

I remember that article! Didn't you also do the old "iron body thing" where you laid stretched out between two folding chairs with your head on one and your feet on the other?

Yep. And bending the re-bar rods pointed against my neck. I even did the iron-palm thing where you stack several bricks or pavers (with or without spacers) and then have a volunteer pick which one you will break when you strike the stack. People are most impressed when you break only the middle one out of three, for example.

For the record, I figured out how to do it, but was never very consistent or a very good performer. So there went my dreams of being the Amazing Randi of the martial arts.

...maybe if I had an actual background in performing magic tricks I would have done better? Anyway, it was fun at the time.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

There are plenty of people competing in MMA that come to it without any prior martial arts background. They sign up and train in an MMA gym and basically learn MMA as its own "style." Now this "style" may be a mix of kickboxing, wrestling, and no-Gi BJJ, but it has become a thing all of itself.

Fighting can be as simple as to develop a set of:

1. finish strategy first.
2. entering strategy afterward.

For example, your finish strategy can be your "cross". You then use your jab along with your footwork to set up your cross.

If we all follow this development pattern - define goal first, find a path to reach to that goal afterward, there will be no difference between TMA and MMA.

Unfortunately, most TMA training may reverse the order of "goal first, path later".

 

[drop bear]

You think? I've never seen an aikido throw work against even an untrained resisting opponent, much less a trained martial artist. Not saying it's impossible, only that in roughly 25 years of training and competition I've never seen it happen.

I have. But they were not Aikido guys doing it. Which relates to this competition idea.

 

[drop bear]

Except for the limited size of your platform, that is essentially Sanda rules. Why reinvent the wheel?

San Shou Rules

Because there has to be a reason why a person who wants to use wing chun does wing chun.

Otherwise you get all your talent and resources sucked away into other styles.

People ask why arts like wing chun can't compete against arts like MMA and never consider. The best martial artists. And the most money.

If a wing chun guy could demolish all the MMA guys in the world. He would be a MMAer. Why the hell would he still do wing chun?

 

[Flying Crane]

Everyone in Wing Chun or other TCMAs thinks that 90% of the instruction out there is crap, but that they and their lineage belong to the other 10%.

You find a lot less of this in arts that compete regularly. Darwinism plays its part, and the incompetents and their instructors are quickly shown to be so. No one gets to sit on their laurels because their competitors are continually trying to improve, which pushes them on.

If your base of proof of competence is unrecorded "street fights", that doesn't apply. I suspect some people might even exaggerate or lie about such things ...

And yet there is still a lot of bad instruction going on out there.

If you like to compete, by alll means, go for it.

I don't find it necessary. But that's my opinion.

 

[drop bear]

And yet there is still a lot of bad instruction going on out there.

If you like to compete, by alll means, go for it.

I don't find it necessary. But that's my opinion.

The point is you can tell a lot more easily if they compete.

So somebody kind of should somewhere before you move conceptually into crazy town.

 

[Juany118]

You think? I've never seen an aikido throw work against even an untrained resisting opponent, much less a trained martial artist. Not saying it's impossible, only that in roughly 25 years of training and competition I've never seen it happen.

That's because all Aikido isn't created equal. @gpseymour can attest to this. You have the Aikido that was more about spiritual cultivation, which Ueshiba Sensei taught at the end of his life and then you have sub Lineages like Yoshinkan Aikido, which is MUCH closer to the Date Aiki-Jujutsu roots, the practictioners of which are sometimes called "evil-doers" half jokingly but the rest of the community. This is a product of the fact the founder was a pre-WWII student of O'Sensei and when he was given permission to start his own teaching after the war used his war time experience. We actually would enter with strikes then go for the takedowns and it is, eventually, against resisting opponents al la Judo and BJJ etc. Then you have hybrids like NGA.

The problem is Yoshinkan Aikido Dojos are no where near as common.

P.S. I said "eventually" because at my school at least, the Sensei was obsessive about making sure you knew how to fall first before you started going into "resisting" training to avoid injury.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

P.S. I said "eventually" because at my school at least, the Sensei was obsessive about making sure you knew how to fall first before you started going into "resisting" training to avoid injury.

"Eventually" is true for my students, as well. I don't get a lot of young folks with a desire for hard fighting and an ability to regrow lost limbs (at least, I'm pretty sure I could do that at 29). I mostly get middle-aged folks (at 47, I have had only 2 students younger than me) who have to be much more careful about getting injured.

 

[Flying Crane]

You think? I've never seen an aikido throw work against even an untrained resisting opponent, much less a trained martial artist. Not saying it's impossible, only that in roughly 25 years of training and competition I've never seen it happen.

It does beg the question, how much aikido, and under what conditions, have you seen it done?

I've been training for well over 30 years, and there is a whole lot that I haven't seen because, well, I wasn't there to see it.

I could make all manner of obnoxious claims in an attempt to cast different systems in a bad light, such as: in all my years, I've never seen someone successfully use BJJ to defend himself from an assailant. Or...I've never seen a Muay Thai round kick used successfully on an assailant in the street. I could go on and on with such statements. I don't because, well, there is a whole lot that goes on in the world that I wasn't there to see. So I don't make such statements.

Just because you weren't there to see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

 

[drop bear]

It does beg the question, how much aikido, and under what conditions, have you seen it done?

I've been training for well over 30 years, and there is a whole lot that I haven't seen because, well, I wasn't there to see it.

I could make all manner of obnoxious claims in an attempt to cast different systems in a bad light, such as: in all my years, I've never seen someone successfully use BJJ to defend himself from an assailant. Or...I've never seen a Muay Thai round kick used successfully on an assailant in the street. I could go on and on with such statements. I don't because, well, there is a whole lot that goes on in the world that I wasn't there to see. So I don't make such statements.

Just because you weren't there to see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

 

[geezer]

Except for the limited size of your platform, that is essentially Sanda rules. Why reinvent the wheel?

San Shou Rules

I like to drive my own set of wheels!

So maybe you call it WC Sanda --or small platform sanda? If its a WC thing, maybe more WC people will participate? One can only hope!

 

[Martial D]

It does beg the question, how much aikido, and under what conditions, have you seen it done?

I've been training for well over 30 years, and there is a whole lot that I haven't seen because, well, I wasn't there to see it.

I could make all manner of obnoxious claims in an attempt to cast different systems in a bad light, such as: in all my years, I've never seen someone successfully use BJJ to defend himself from an assailant. Or...I've never seen a Muay Thai round kick used successfully on an assailant in the street. I could go on and on with such statements. I don't because, well, there is a whole lot that goes on in the world that I wasn't there to see. So I don't make such statements.

Just because you weren't there to see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Dropbear nailed it. And honestly if you made either of those counterclaims, I would have trouble believing you, as there is hours of footage available of both of those things.

Here's the thing, we live in a magical age where almost every single person carries a video camera in their pockets. I do wonder if these Aikido men have been borrowing from ninjitsu in the art of staying totally hidden.

I've personally sparred with more than a few aikido guys over the years. Their aikido always seems to turn into sloppy kickboxing when it's go time for some reason or other. Your milage may vary.

 

[Juany118]

I think there is a difference here because here we are talking about anecdotal experience, not an assertion inserted into something that is based on empirically proven science. That said, while it's just sparring, and just TMA vs TMA.

 

[wingchun100]

I think there is a difference here because here we are talking about anecdotal experience, not an assertion inserted into something that is based on empirically proven science. That said, while it's just sparring, and just TMA vs TMA.

Pretty good, but I have some background information on this: the TKD guy had a cold that day. Plus he didn't get much sleep the night before. Plus he has a job as a beer truck driver delivery guy, which is all driver unload, so he was really sore.

 

[wingchun100]

I like to drive my own set of wheels!

So maybe you call it WC Sanda --or small platform sanda? If its a WC thing, maybe more WC people will participate? One can only hope!

For a moment I seriously thought about reaching out to the local WC people and organizing this...but then I realized what their response would be.

"Wing Chun is for life or death street defense...not ego-boosting tournaments."

Maybe someone else will be able to take this idea and run with it.

 

[Juany118]

Dropbear nailed it. And honestly if you made either of those counterclaims, I would have trouble believing you, as there is hours of footage available of both of those things.

Here's the thing, we live in a magical age where almost every single person carries a video camera in their pockets. I do wonder if these Aikido men have been borrowing from ninjitsu in the art of staying totally hidden.

I've personally sparred with more than a few aikido guys over the years. Their aikido always seems to turn into sloppy kickboxing when it's go time for some reason or other. Your milage may vary.

The videos exist, sorta. The problem is this. As I noted their is the Aikido that most people know in the West, then the far less seen Aikido of Yoshinkan, NGA etc. The reason is two fold. First O'Sensei, for whatever reason, turned to Spiritual cultivation and the majority of the schools in the West follow his final teachings. Second, people see that mkre common demonstration and say "let's study BJJ." There market forces trigger. So while in Japan Yoshinkan and Tenshin Dojo Aikido are more common than in the West (NGA not sure), the West tends to not notice there is Aikido that actually "works".

I still remember the first time I sparred school v school with a "typical" Aikido school. The students of the other school were pissed. We did strikes as we entered. Our throws were tighter and straight to the ground vs the wider throws they did. We didn't "submit" to a throw until injury was imminent, they went with throw as soon as it started, but what I studied was still Aikido it was simply the Aikido of an "evil Aikidoka".

 

[Juany118]

For a moment I seriously thought about reaching out to the local WC people and organizing this...but then I realized what their response would be.

"Wing Chun is for life or death street defense...not ego-boosting tournaments."

Maybe someone else will be able to take this idea and run with it.

And here in lies the problem. You can't actually prepare for life or death street defense without pressure testing but since real pressure testing tends to scare away $$$$ paying students they don't pressure test and need an excuse for it. That's what happens when Martial arts become about business and not fighting.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

I like to drive my own set of wheels!

So maybe you call it WC Sanda --or small platform sanda? If its a WC thing, maybe more WC people will participate? One can only hope!

The ASCSA had tried that approach. We tried to be different from Sanda and we called our tournament "combat SC". The only difference is we don't have the 3 second holding rule. But since we can't attract Sanda fighters, later on we had to merged with Sanda/Sanshou.

IMO, if you don't want to isolate yourself from others, it's better to merge with others than to start something new.